What you tend you grow. As I was watering this afternoon I looked at a conifer in the corner of the yard. It was not a plant I had purchased or even one that I would have put in my garden but alas it came into my possession so I planted it and basically left it to fend for itself.

My Mock Orange however I love and I have nurtured it through icy winters and blazing summers, watching it grow from a single stem to a small shrub almost to my waist. Its new growth, light green and soft, shows my time and attention.

I looked over at the dried and withered conifer and realised that it could also look as healthy as my Mock Orange if I had tended it more. My spiritual life is the same. What I tend I grow. I can leave my spiritual progress to fend for itself and it will look like my conifer, sad and brown or I can do all I can to maintain its chance for maximum growth.

The Word of God is my water, prayer my fertilizer and my worship the wind. It is summer now I need all the water I can get! God blessAnnie

When I look at creating a new patch in my garden, I am partial to planting in rows. I have my agapanthuses in a row. I have my Red Robins in a row and when I first planted my Chinese Lanterns, they were in a row.

I have seen some wonderful formal gardens but when I look at the natural bush around me, with no rows, or formality, there is something special about the chaos. A garden that grows to its own rules, and my hands have not interfered, can still manage to create a wonderful mesh mash of green.

With that thought it hit me, a revelation about the wonder of letting go and allowing things to just happen. Yes there is a time and place to roll up my sleeves and be in control but there is also a time to let go and remember that God is in control.

There is something liberating about not trying to control everything. It is okay to let a mess happen. Sometimes I realise I get in the way. What does it matter if things don’t go exactly according to plan? I like those gardens that have a wild look, but it will never happen to my garden if I don’t leave it alone sometimes.

Relax, rest, enjoy, let go and let God work, needs to be as much a part of my gardening regime in both my natural garden and spiritual garden as planning and hard work. Who knows, something wonderful may happen if I step back and watch what grows and if I am honest they can often turn out a lot better than I could have intended.

I find it quite amazing how plants have such varied root systems. Some are so shallow and fine that you can pull the plant up with two fingers. Others you can tug and pull with all your might but not budge them.

I had some honey suckle growing over archers which ended buckling them. I wanted to keep one of the several plants I was uprooting, to replant it down the back of the yard. I chopped off all its branches until it ended up little more than a stump with a couple of spindly arms. Then I started digging it up.

I heaved and pulled, tugged and couldn’t budge it. I literally had to chop the roots just about off to be able to pull the stump out. I planted it down in the corner and before long it began to sprout.

I like the plant’s gumption and I am just as determined to be as difficult and unmovable to the enemy as my honeysuckle was for me. I am growing towards a root system buried so far into the rock that nothing can shift me.

How wonderful to be so planted that the devil can’t get a foot hold. Let’s face it, no matter what happens to me here, I am not going to be fussing over it when I am in eternity with Jesus forever. Now for me, that’s victory. God Bless Annie

Plants are very clever when adapting to their surroundings, no matter how hostile. Extreme cold, extreme heat, so much water or hardly any water, they can live and grow.If you look at a cactus, inside they are fibrous and spongy, so they can sustain long periods of drought and still thrive. It really is quiet amazing.It reminds me of a song I like, “Everywhere you go always take the weather with you.” They do that. Internally is how they sustain themselves and I realise I need to do that.When I find myself in a situation where people may be acting, unfriendly or worse, then I need to rely on the internal power provided to me from my maker. The surrounding temperatures can be rather frosty or they can be blisteringly hot, however, inside where the Holy Ghost is, it is very nice indeed.Plants have a built in resilience and so do I. I just need to draw on it. Often times I think I need external approval, appreciation, encouragement, and whether it is forthcoming or not, I must remember, my true resilience is internal. God approves, He appreciates and He encourages me and will continue to do so all the way to the end.Like the plants, who, I am sure, are not partial to too much of anything, I can survive and thrive in any given situation. Paul did in Acts, prison or free he grew from glory to glory. I have little control over external weather but internally I can and will take the weather with me – the Son!

When I sit and look at my garden, taking in the tall trees, the shrubs and the herbs growing in the tubs, I realise something rather profound. No one plant is the garden. No one plant can say I am what makes this garden work or look beautiful. The garden is made up of single plants. Each plant plays its part, whether it is to provide shade, bring colour, perfume, texture or food. It would be ridiculous for any one plant to claim the glory for the whole garden and the body of Christ, my church, is the same. Each member plays a part, doing what God has called them to do and no one person is any more or less valuable than another. I can never forget that I started as a seed. God has watered, fertilised and assisted me to grow and I am one of many that bring about the beauty of God’s garden.

The thought keeps me humble and yet strangely encouraged. I am no more or less than my brother, so how can I then judge and how can I not feel needed? What an inspired and ingenious system God has created.

Am I the tall gum or the flowing shrub? Do I produce fruit or grow as a thick hedge? I guess that is up to God but I do know whatever I am; I contribute to the wonderful garden of God!God blessAnnie

A tree that has always captured my attention and admiration is the Jacaranda. Its pure purple flowers and the great mess it leaves when it abandons it colour, is so appealing that I decided to try to grow one in my garden. They are frost tender, especially for the first years of its life, so I knew it would be a challenge.

I planted the robust specimen, one I had carefully chosen, in my front yard. I waited until it was spring, wanting to give it the maximum opportunity to get established before winter set in, placing it in a nice spot near the driveway.

The first winter saw it brutally confronted with icy mornings and cold windy days and when spring finally came around again, I waited patiently for the tree to revive and renew its limp brownish leaves. It didn’t, it only managed to survive, doing little else.

In the end I dug it up and put it in a tub. I sat it against the fence in the backyard to live or die. Then surprise, like the beanstalk for Jack, there were buds and new growth sprouting with energy.

If it did better near the fence in the back yard then that it where it would go. I put it back into the ground and it flourished. As I looked at it over the next few months, I realised I am exactly the same. I need to be in the right position to do well.

God’s will is the ideal spot for me. I need to let God lead me, guide me into the perfect position, and then I thrive. I have struggled in front yard spots like my Jacaranda, ones that I had chosen for myself, thinking I knew better, but when I relax and let God pop me in that ideal special space, Voilà! I grow. God bless Annie

The last two weeks have been rather frantic with the ‘To Do’ lists I have, both at work and at home. Suffice to say my garden sits and waits patiently for me to give it some uninterrupted time and loving attention.

Sometimes even the things I love seem to take a back seat to tasks that press for my immediate response.

I think God is the same, waiting patiently for me to turn my notice to Him. Life pushes and shoves for my interest with worldly pursuits – work demands, appointments beeping from the alarm on my phone, my neighbour needing help, and on and on it goes.

Serious one on one time cannot be compared, the garden needs it and more importantly I need it - God time that is. If I neglect it, I end up looking like my garden, all weedy and overgrown with menaces that choke out the new growth.

It is all about prioritising. There will always be things on my list to do and I will need to do them, but I can choose to make time for those important tasks that I want to give my time to - God, my family and friends, my garden. The washing is urgent yes, but God is important…in the garden with God wearing a dirty shirt…works for me! God BlessAnnie

I am pleased to see that so far the frosts have not been too heavy this winter, unlike some previous years. I remember the year before last we had a searing summer. My hardy agapanthus where scorched from the day-after-day 30+ degree sunshine. When autumn finally bought some respite, I am sure I saw the plants heave a sigh of relief.

The trouble was it was an incredibly short autumn and winter then hit with the gusto of a pig at a freshly filled trough. The minus degree morning went on for weeks and I could have walked outside in the early morning and snapped the Aggie’s leaves in two. They were frozen solid.

Thankfully Aggies are a hardy plant and they survived and went on to produce a lovely display in spring, but other, more tender plants, succumb to the battering of the weather extremes. The excessive heat then cold took them off to plant heaven.

I know I am the same. I am not good with extremes or anything in excess. Life is much more pleasant and enjoyable when I have a good measure, rather than an overdose. Too much telly, too much food, too much housework (sorry just had to put that one in there) is not a good thing.

Unlike my plants however, I do have a little more control over the dosage size of things and I will remain ever watchful I don’t overindulge, overdo or under indulge and undo things. The only thing I want to overdose on is Jesus and that is the best thing!God BlessAnnie

As I drive to work each day, I take note of the gardens as I pass, and I must say that they are as diverse and assorted as people.

There is one garden which has hedges and small shrubs lined in perfect symmetry and every bush is clipped with a precise evenness. There is another garden that looks like a mysterious overgrown sanctuary of secret pathways and shady intimate havens. I want to stop and admire the blooms in the country cottage yard, the one with the gorgeous roses that fill their space with colour and a sweet perfume and then there are the gardens with tall gums that provide shelter and a nature fuelled harmony of birds and cicadas.

I love them all and as I think about them, I realise it is my chance to see people from God’s perspective. We are all varied and unique and most importantly we are all as interesting as each other to God.

I may never be the manicured estate with every blade cut at the perfect length and I may never produce superb flora displays like the Jacaranda’s purple blooms, but I am what I am and I am still as equally beautiful and fascinating.

If I want to be something or someone else, then I am denying the very who God made me and the world would miss out on what I have to offer.

I wouldn’t want every garden that I go past to be the same and I think God agrees. I am a one of a kind; just like my garden and that is a good thing.

I have never been overly successful when it comes to growing vegetables. I have managed a decent batch of silver beet and a tomato or two but that is about it. I tried Chinese cabbages last year and the bad news was out of a crop of six plants, I only managed to produce one cabbage I could harvest. The good news was I found I didn’t like Chinese cabbage. I put my lack of success down to a lack of knowledge. I am not up on soil types, the ph balance, nitrogen levels, phosphorus levels and pest control and the consequence of that is that they withered not long after planting, grew in a stunted and/or gangly way, or ended up with more holes than my husband’s socks.

Knowledge equals success I know, but even knowing that, I still blunder on; grieving my failures, hoping one day success will miraculously happen. Now that is not a good thing in my natural garden but it is even worse if it happens in my spiritual garden and I have seen it so often in myself and others. Christians can live in a fog of knowledge need.

One of the areas of misunderstanding for me until recent years was the grasp, (or lack of), a revelation of just how much God loves me. For me He was the Judge, the one who may frown at my sin-based decisions and who healed me if it was His will (and when that was I was never sure).

Thankfully gone is that ignorance, that erroneous insight of God, and I have a greater understanding of the truth now. God is Love. Some might say ‘der’ because it is written in black and white in my bible, but it is getting that, believing that and living that, that changes you.

God says my people perish because of a lack of knowledge and yet He provides all the knowledge we need, more than we need in His Word. So I aim to have a spiritual garden that prospers and fruits because I have gained the knowledge God so liberally provides. My natural garden however may not be as blessed as I continue to flounder, unfortunately not as motivated when it comes to sticking my head in the latest beautiful gardening magazine.God BlessAnnie